Architecture and Public Policy

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CIS explores how changes in the architecture of computer networks affect the economic environment for innovation and competition on the Internet, and how the law should react to those changes. This work has lead us to analyze the issue of network neutrality, perhaps the Internet's most debated policy issue, which concerns Internet user's ability to access the content and software of their choice without interference from network providers.

Ademir splits his time between two worlds. He is part-time is in academia, doing research focusing on efforts by Latin American regulators to promote increased access to broadband Internet and implement a network neutrality regime. He has been particularly interested in the debate involving the regulation of network neutrality in Brazil and the US, and has submitted contributions to the Brazilian Ministry of Justice and to the US Federal Communications Commission. His PhD thesis submitted to the University of Sao Paulo Law School has been approved with honors and will be published.

Richard Salgado serves as Google's Director for information security and law enforcement matters. Prior to joining Google, Richard was with Yahoo!, focusing on international security and compliance work. He also served as senior counsel in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the United States Department of Justice. As a federal prosecutor, Richard specialized in investigating and prosecuting computer network cases, such as computer hacking, illegal computer wiretaps, denial of service attacks, malicious code, and other technology-driven privacy crimes.

Brendan Sasso is the Open Internet Fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. In his previous career as a journalist, he covered the Federal Communications Commission as it wrote landmark net neutrality regulations in 2015. He also wrote about issues including consumer privacy, government surveillance, cybersecurity, and intellectual property. He worked for The Hill and National Journal, and his work has also appeared in The Atlantic, Quartz, and DefenseOne. He has appeared on C-SPAN, MSNBC, Fox News, and NPR to discuss current technology policy issues.

Ben Scott is a Visiting Fellow at the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung in Berlin and Senior Adviser to the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation in Washington DC. Previously, he was Policy Advisor for Innovation at the US Department of State, where he worked at the intersection of technology and foreign policy. In a small team of advisors to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he helped to steward the 21st Century Statecraft agenda with a focus on technology policy, social media and development.

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In the lead-up to the FCC's historic vote in December 2017 to repeal all net neutrality protections, 22 million comments were filed to the agency.

But unfortunately, millions of those comments were fake. Some of the fake comment were part of sophisticated campaigns that filed fake comments using the names of real people - including journalists, Senators and dead people.

October is 'National Cybersecurity Awareness Month' in the United States. As many of you know, this already rather interdisciplinary field of 'cyber' has grown again over the past year or so --- now often encompassing issues like so-called 'fake news', disinformation, data analytics, and other current issues that further demonstrate some of the consequences resulting from the convergence of technology, adversaries, and society.

In a New York Times review of Edward Tenner’s book The Efficiency Paradox, Gal Beckerman observes that a key point is not simply to watch how much time we spend using technology, but to remember that “the tools we’ve invented to improve our lives are just that, tools, to be picked up and put down. We wield them.”

Which pretty succinctly states the main point of this entire series of blog posts: that human agency matters. Or, perhaps more directly, that while we all know human agency matters, we all too frequently overlook that point. This post (on Labor Day, 2018) thus asks what is the real value of human agency? By identifying value in it, I hope to set the stage for future posts on the urgency of fostering greater awareness of it.

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This week, the House will vote on H.R. 1644, introduced by Rep. Mike Doyle, which would reinstate the net neutrality protections of the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order as of January 19, 2017. H.R. 1096, a competing measure introduced by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, purports to restore the Open Internet Order’s rules against blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization, as well as the transparency rule.

Both bills have been touted as means to restore comprehensive net neutrality protections for all Americans.

In the leadup to the FCC's historic vote in December 2017 to repeal all net neutrality protections, 22 million comments were filed to the agency.

But unfortunately, millions of those comments were fake. Some of the fake comment were part of sophisticated campaigns that filed fake comments using the names of real people - including journalists, Senators and dead people.

Reconciling Copyright with Cumulative Creativity: The Third Paradigm examines the long history of creativity, from cave art to digital remix, in order to demonstrate a consistent disparity between the traditional cumulative mechanics of creativity and modern copyright policies.

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Comcast Corp. v. FCC is a 2010 United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia case holding that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have ancillary jurisdiction over Comcast’s Internet service under the language of the Communications Act of 1934. In so holding, the Court vacated a 2008 order issued by the FCC that asserted jurisdiction over Comcast’s network management polices and censured Comcast from interfering with its subscribers' use of peer-to-peer software.

In 2005, on the same day the FCC re-classified DSL service and effectively reduced the regulatory obligations of DSL providers, the FCC announced its unanimous view that consumers are entitled to certain rights and expectations with respect to their broadband service, including the right to:

"“Governor Brown has a long history of vetoing legislation that you might think he'd totally support, including bills that exercise state power as a way to get back at the Trump administration,” said Ryan Singel, a former journalist and fellow at the Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society."

""Today was a landmark in the fight to preserve a free and open Internet," Stanford law professor Barbara van Schewick wrote. "SB 822 brings back net neutrality to California and restores the important protections that the FCC voted to eliminate last December."

"Stanford Center for Internet and Society director Barbara van Schewick said in a statement that "SB 822 sets the standard for other states to follow. SB 822 is the only state-level bill that truly restores all the 2015 net neutrality protections. That's what makes it so special. Most state-level bills have just copied the text of the FCC's 2015 net neutrality rules, leaving out critical protections.

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Stanford CIS brings together scholars, academics, legislators, students, programmers, security researchers, and scientists to study the interaction of new technologies and the law and to examine how the synergy between the two can either promote or harm public goods like free speech, innovation, privacy, public commons, diversity, and scientific inquiry

This year’s Security of Things Forum will feature two tracks: Leaders and Hackers that are intended to balance high-level talks and panel discussions focused on the operational and policy impacts of securing the Internet of Things with a variety of hands-on demonstrations, tutorials and granular “shop talks” on everything to IoT device hacking to protocols and platform as a service options, to securing IoT devices in enterprises and critical infrastructure settings.

Valarie Kaur, a civil rights lawyer, documentary filmmaker and interfaith leader, will deliver the commencement address during the 100th annual commencement ceremony at the College of Saint Benedict at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 9, in Clemens Field House on the CSB campus, St. Joseph, Minnesota.

The days are numbered for federal net neutrality regulations. In response, some states are working on their own versions to prevent internet service providers (ISP) from blocking, slowing or charging more for some web traffic. Oregon, Washington and several other states have made new rules, but a bill working its way through the California legislature would go the furthest. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood spoke with Ryan Singel, a media and strategy fellow at Stanford Law School, about how a state can regulate a business that crosses state lines.